Hans Hufschmid Introduces Hedge Fund Industry Tracker
Hans Hufschmid, a former London co-head of Long-Term Capital Management, has launched the first hedge fund-industry tracker fund called Altß.
The
launch of Altß by Hans Hufschmid takes place amid widespread
disillusion with traditional “funds of funds”. These were once a popular
way for institutional investors to get access to elite hedge funds but
have been plagued by high fees and underperformance.
Altß
is to build a portfolio of investments designed to mirror the broad
fund universe, with higher weightings for the most common hedge fund
strategies such as long-short equity and fixed-income trading.
“The
trend is towards indexes in everything,” Mr Hufschmid told the
Financial Times. “That option exists in equities and in fixed income,
but it does not exist in hedge funds in an efficient manner. What does
it even mean to track the industry? There is no FTSE 100 or S&P 500
to track.”
Mr
Hufschmid, who began his career on the bond desk at Salomon Brothers in
London, was a principal at LTCM for five years and one of two leaders
in the UK, where he served on its risk management and management
committees at the time of its near-collapse in 1998. The highly
leveraged company was bailed out by its creditors in an emergency deal
brokered by the US Federal Reserve.
Source: Financial Times